


and with the dawn, what comes then?

by wordswithdragons



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23037208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithdragons/pseuds/wordswithdragons
Summary: Janai mourns Khessa.
Relationships: Janai & Khessa (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	and with the dawn, what comes then?

**Author's Note:**

> title is from frozen 2's "the next right thing." listen to it if you want to feel devastated.

Lux Aurea has never felt cold before. It’s early morning when Janai comes back home, although how much of it is still _home_ is questionable. The soft blue streaks of a dewey morning has not come to Lux Aurea in a thousand years, not since the gift of the direct source of their Primal from Sol Regem, but it breaks now, the natural light of the sun being the only thing streaming through their streets. The irony is not lost on her, that the sun still shines even when Her Radiance — the sun incarnate on earth — is gone.

She is queen now, Janai thinks. This is her city now more than ever. Yet it holds nothing that made Lux Aurea hers. The palace is in ruins, its magic corrupted. Her brother left their childhood home long ago after their parents died.

She is alone, now. Once, she strove for independence from her royal title, to be something other than one of the spare heirs, than a princess. Now she would give it all back, live gladly in Khessa’s shadow, in a heartbeat. Anything, if it meant her sister could come home with her and make it home again.

The morning songbirds sing.

Khessa does not appear in anything other than her mind’s eye, and Janai soldiers on.

This is a new battle to win.

* * *

Janai spends her days rebuilding. Writes letters and composes treaties. Sends elves to the Breach to help build new bridge they’re making. Makes sure her army is still up to shape, just in case — the only familiar thing now. She refuses Khessa’s old bedroom and takes a simpler room with a wider balcony. Leans on the golden railing framing it and sees messenger birds carrying letters marked with Katolis’ seal — correspondence from Amaya, one of the only things that can make Janai smile, these days.

It helps, to know at least one person understands the weight of the grief on her shoulders, even heavier than the crown she now wears.

Khessa could be cold and cruel, but she was still her _sister_. There when Janai took her first steps, had her first heartbreak with a female guard as a teenager. There when Janai was little and toddling after her, always waiting just long enough for her to catch up. There when Janai changed her pronouns. There to hold her when their parents died, Khessa the only steady thing in the world.

There’s little else in her world, now.

* * *

The proper funeral rites cannot be conducted without a body, so Janai commits herself to building a statue, instead. It’s not a perfect likeness of Khessa — more abstract, the pole she’d always carried with her, her crown and rigid stature — as proud as her sister was, she doesn’t think she’d want that.

It takes many evenings in the library to draw up the sketches and schematics, to find a design achievable by metal work and magic, one that’s right. A proper remembrance as much as she can give.

She has to do _something_. It may as well be this.

* * *

It takes months before Janai can step into the throne room and stop expecting Khessa to be sitting on the golden seat. Her sister, always proud, always powerful. Janai remembers roping their little brother in for pranks to mess with the tassels on Khessa’s headdress, to turn her face paint blue instead of gold — oh, she’d been _furious_ and they’d laughed themselves silly _._

The Primal still hasn’t been restored, so the throne room is dark, when she stops on her way back to her room from the castle library, one night. Night is still a little strange to her, but she’s mostly grown used to it. Remembers the first one she’d ever experienced, when an uncle had died when she was six.

 _Why is it so dark out?_ she’d asked Khessa, trying to hide her trembling.

Khessa’s eyes had flickered over to her, now only looking mildly annoyed at being disturbed by her baby sister in the middle of the night. _It’s a mourning ritual, for uncle._ The only time the primal was ever doused by their parents. _Are you too scared to sleep?_

Flushing, Janai had clenched her fists and snapped, _No!_ But it was true. It was scary to close her eyes in the dark, and see nothing but dark even if she opened them. 

Khessa had stepped away and waved her into the room. _You can sleep with me for tonight. But only for tonight, little sister._

She’d scrambled into bed without another word, felt Khessa’s arms wrap protectively around her, and finally fallen asleep.

This time as she approaches the throne, and sits in with the same empty feeling as always, Janai wonders if it will ever get any easier. If it will ever hurt any less. It’s been four months, but it feels so much shorter. It feels so much longer. It feels like this night will never end, and she’ll be stuck here, forever, and—

Janai chokes back the first sob but doesn’t manage to do so with the second. Keels over in the seat and curls into a ball, as tight and small as she can be, as constricted and small as she feels. 

Eventually, she knows, the night will end. And in the meantime, she sobs and knows she just has to make it through this one.

* * *

Dawn is new in Lux Aurea too, the sky streaked pink and gold. She skips her morning workout for once, instead choosing to walk in the palace gardens, see the golden apples growing in the orchard. Wander over to one of the flower balconies and look at the statue situated below, in one of the courtyards that borders the more residential sections of the castle now under renovation.

The dawn is gentle on her face.

“I always looked up to you, sister,” Janai says, her throat thick as she looks down. “And not just because you were the sun. I miss you. I—” Her voice catches. “I am _learning_ how to miss you.” How to live with it.

It’s still not any easier, Janai thinks, as she looks away, heart a little less torn than the day before. But maybe it’s enough all the same. 


End file.
